


Smile Around the Blood on Your Teeth

by what_alchemy



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Wakanda (Marvel), takes place between civil war and infinity war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 20:05:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16182230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: Bucky doesn't really know how to keep a journal, but he knows how to write to Steve.





	Smile Around the Blood on Your Teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VictoryCandescence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoryCandescence/gifts).



> for Victory Candescence, who asked for long distance pining while in Wakanda. I hope you enjoy it!

Shuri got me this notebook because I didn’t want a tablet. Good pen too. I don’t like the new ballpoints. She called me Grandfather Time though. 

I was left-handed once. I remember that. And I remember you, defending me from the nuns who called me sinister and put the pen in my goddamn right hand. The cramping and the seizing, and you, your face so red it looked like your head was going to pop clean off. We both caught the switch on our left hands. The welts lasted days. I remember that too.

Do you still draw, I wonder? I hope so. You really had something there. Should have been in museums. I think it would be better if I could fill this up with drawings. Wakanda’s real beautiful, you know? But I don’t draw and I ain’t got much to say. Not like you’ll ever actually read this. 

 

 

 

Shuri’s fitting me with a brand new arm. She’s got a lot to say about it and I like to hear her talk, but I don’t suppose I catch even half of what she means. Like Stark on steroids. She said it will be hypersensitive, that I’ll actually be able to feel with it again. Write with it again. I don’t think I’ll bother though. Who needs the smudges?

I should be able to take it on and off too. Not like the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that. ~~Those were fucked Steve.~~ I think I’ll like to sleep with it off. These days I sleep on my left side, nothing in the way, a pillow tucked into my chest. ~~I remember we used to lie like that, but you were the pillow and~~

She says I will need physical therapy to get used to it. And occupational therapy. I don’t know what occupational therapy is. ~~I suppose you just came out of the box perfect, damn near a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier.~~

I’m having a bad day.

 

 

 

Your visits are too short.

 

 

 

You don’t know what it’s like to watch the sun rise over the mountains and the trees and the lake here. The birds singing. The stillness before everyone else wakes up. The yellow wash of the world, like it could be something new instead of what it always is. A man could convince himself there’s another world in the water’s reflection, inverted and glittering. In that world, maybe you never went to war. In that world, maybe I came back an arm lighter but okay. ~~In that world I came back to you and you came back to me too ah hell~~

You should stay longer than a few hours, is all I’m saying. Long enough to let your scent linger maybe. Keep me company.

 

 

 

Yeah I know we watched the sun rise in Italy. And Germany. It’s not the same. Different part of the world, for one. No watch to keep. No Dum Dum sawing logs. No rifle on my shoulder. No knot in my gut.

Nostalgia’s funny, I guess. I miss those days but I hate them too. The fear. The fucking Nazis. No I wouldn’t go back but it’s like my brain wants to play pretend, unspooling like runaway thread. Pretend those days were good. You didn’t have asthma, or scoliosis, and your ear was clear. You ran and fought and smiled around the blood in your mouth like you always wanted. We were property of the US government but damned if we weren’t free for the first time. I woulda stuck with you forever.

 

 

 

Sometimes I miss you so bad my chest hurts and my throat and hell my balls too but I can’t keep you straight in my head — the little guy with the chip on his shoulder and the black eye or the 8th wonder of the world who suddenly knew how to smile for the camera? They’re the same, you’re the same, I’m the one who’s not the same and that’s why 

What they did to me on that table, Steve. A thousand tables, a thousand years or seventy who can keep count but I wake up, you know, I wake up screaming

 

 

 

We can play pretend but I died on that table Steve.

 

 

 

Night time here is good too. It smells good but it’s hard to describe. Fresh, I guess. Like a waterfall in the jungle. The city is nearby but there’s not a hint of smog. I don’t know how they do it; might as well be something out of Amazing Stories. But when it’s night and everyone else is in bed and the lights in the other houses are off I like to take a canoe out onto the lake and when I get to the middle I put the oar inside and lie on my back and just float. Sometimes the moon is so low it feels like you can reach out and touch it. 

When we were kids in Brooklyn no one coulda told me you could see the planets on a clear night. Hell, no one coulda told me you could see the stars. Now I’ve seen Mars and Mercury and meteor showers. Do they still publish Amazing Stories? 

Stars are best though. I wish on the falling ones. I wish that you’re safe.

 

 

 

Don’t kiss me in front of Shuri next time. She is probably still rolling on the floor laughing. I thought that was slang but it is a real thing and she did it and now I’m Grandfather Business Time.

And don’t wait til the last second to kiss me next time either. Don’t know what you’re so nervous about. You must know I’m a sure thing. ~~Though what you want with a one armed mass murderer I’ll never~~

Shuri says I am “not to engage in negative self talk.”

You could have anyone. I don’t know why me but I know not to question it. So I guess all that’s left is to say kiss me some more, touch me everywhere, let me breathe you in again and always. Don’t leave.

 

 

 

They got real good food in Wakanda. Lots of different ingredients and spices and flavors we never dreamed of back then, boiling our meat til it was gray and grateful for the privilege. You should stay for more than one meal next time. They don’t even have poor people here Steve. No one is hungry. Can you imagine? No one is hungry.

 

 

 

SAM IS TOO OLD FOR SHURI I WILL FIGHT HIM

 

 

 

Shuri says I am not allowed to fight Sam and also Sam is “seeing someone” and “doesn’t know anything” so I’m “not allowed to say a word on pain of Okoye.”

 

 

 

Is it you Sam’s seeing? I wouldn’t blame you. He can fly and has a great ass. I would be okay with it, I think. But I hope he only likes girls. Women. Grown women his own age or older. Next time I see him I will expound upon the virtues of the older woman. 

 

 

 

I played soccer with some kids today. They went easy on me on account of the arm. I went easy on them on account of the super strength. 

We never did that, did we? Soccer. We had a bat and a raggedy ball and a million stats in our heads. The most I can get out of these little guys is some cricket scores. Cricket! I said I ain’t the queen and they said of course not, Queen Ramonda has better fashion sense, and hair, and diplomatic skill. 

When I’m at therapy there are computers everywhere, so I check. On you, but also baseball. I can’t bring myself to root for the Dodgers anymore, but I get sick just thinking about the Mets. Let’s not talk about the Y-words.

Maybe I should take up cricket.

 

 

 

T’Challa visits me sometimes. He asks about my arm and my head and you, as if he doesn’t see you every time you visit. He talks to me like we’re old friends. I tell him how things used to be. That old mattress on the floor, one threadbare blanket between us, sleeping in our coats in the wintertime. Colcannon for breakfast lunch and dinner. The rattle in your cough and the wheeze in your breath. Prayers when I’d stopped believing anyone was listening.

Today I told him about you and me, how we used to be and how we are and how I hope we’ll be soon, even if you love Sam, even if you never come to live here with me, even if we’re all of us on the run forever. I’ve never actually told anyone how I am before. You know. Using my words, as Shuri would say. 

This guy, Steve. T’Challa, who believed me when I said it wasn’t me who killed his father. Who had too much mercy to destroy the man who did. Who brings his technology and his resources and his food to the world because he can ease some of its suffering even if it leaves him and his country more vulnerable. T’Challa looked at me when I told him what I was and he smiled, clapped my shoulder, and told me I deserved it. Told me I deserve love. Like any other man. Any other person. 

He congratulated me, and you, and said he thinks Sam is involved with a, quote, “terrifying woman.” He winked.

I can see why he is king.

 

 

 

Something big’s coming Steve. No one’s saying anything concrete but I can feel it. Call it super soldier instinct. This asset’s ears are pricked. Shuri’s got my arm up and running better than anything I, or Amazing Stories, could have dreamed. It can feel temperatures. I pet a goat and I could feel the fur. I can make it gentle.

I can make it not gentle.

I don’t like being a weapon. I don’t like that I was the cannon big men pointed at the things, the people they didn’t like. I don’t like that my life was taken from me like it was nothing and I can blink my eyes in this shiny new millennium and trick myself into believing I got it back when all I really got back was some time, and so little of it. I hate that this is what I’m good for.

But if we gotta fight. If I gotta follow you once more unto the breach. If we’re suiting up.

I’m ready. 

 

 

 

I’m going to go out on the lake and pretend for a while. I like the warmth here, and the brightness of the stars, and the people who’ve done nothing but help me and heal me, but I bet there’s somewhere we could go with nobody else for miles. Maybe Scandinavia, or Canada. Somewhere with a real good view of the northern lights. I’d pack us good stuff to eat, light a fire. Find a Billie record to put on. Maybe we could have sex. Do you still like to be licked open and worked for a long time before it slides in? I hope so. I want that. I want to smell your face and your pits and your pubes. I want to feel you falling apart around me. I bet we could go for hours in these new bodies of ours. Come again and again. I want you full of me, and I want to swallow you, rub you into my skin. My marrow. My cells. 

And then, late at night, we’d bundle up and leave our cabin, all the lights turned off. We’d go into a clearing. We’d lie in the snow together. I’d hold your hand. 

The borealis is like nothing you’ve ever seen, Steve. It looks fake at first, just these wild colors flashing and rolling over the sky like waves. Green and purple and pink. Almost makes you wish you could believe in God again. 

I can’t wait to show you.

 

 

 

T’Challa says you’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll be right beside you. Til the end of the line.

 

 

 

**End**


End file.
